Hajj Nurse In Trouble For Mixing With Men

Jakarta Globe, Bilhuda Haryanto | October 17, 2010

Jakarta. An Indonesian nurse who was working with the hajj organizing committee will be deported from Saudi Arabia after being found in a room with three Arab men.

Some female members of the Indonesian pilgrimage group became suspicious on Friday when they heard giggling coming from the drivers’ quarters. Dessi NRP, 25, from Palembang, South Sumatra, was later discovered without her compulsory head scarf.

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to be alone with men who are not their husband, while head scarves, known as the hijab, must be worn at all times outside of private homes.

“When everyone was observing Friday prayer, she entered the drivers’ room, saying she needed to use the bathroom,” Subakin Abdul Munthalib, the chief of the Indonesian Hajj Organizing Committee for Medina, said on Sunday.

“She then told the men that she had a headache and asked one of them to give her a head massage before resting her head on the man’s thigh.”

Dessi said she was in the room because she had a headache and needed to use the bathroom and did not do anything wrong.

After the incident, deemed embarrassing to the Indonesian hajj organizers, Subakin asked the nursing agency that employed Dessi to send her home.

“She is assigned to serve as an officer at the hajj committee in Medina,” he said.

“She’s supposed to abide by the law enforced in Saudi Arabia. It’s different with the law in place in Indonesia.”

Restrained by religious, family and tribal traditions that dictate who a woman may marry, many are choosing to appeal to Saudi Arabia’s courts in order to overturn what many women see as unfair or illogical opposition to marriage by fathers and other male relatives. (AFP Photo/ Amer Hilabi)

Love mountain: Many large villas dot the hills of North and South Tugu villages, in the mountainous Puncak area, Bogor, West Java. While the area is known as a weekend getaway for wealthy Indonesians, it is also a popular spot where Arab tourists marry Indonesian women unofficially for a short period of time.

Related Articles:

Honeymoon tourism in Puncak

A glut of fatwas spurs Saudi king to impose curbs

Do you take this woman... and this woman: Pakistani man to marry TWICE in 24 hours

Men PERMITTED to beat their wives and young children (as long as they don't leave any marks), rules UAE court